Forty eight years ago mercenary troops in the service of a foreign power invaded their own homeland, escorted by a United States squadron, including an aircraft carrier and dozens of fighter planes. That date cannot be forgotten. The great power to the North can apply the same recipe to any Latin American country. It has already happened many times throughout our hemisphere’s history. Is there any declaration guaranteeing that such an action will never repeat again, either directly or through the very armies of other countries, as it occurred in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and others?

The wily surprise attack on the Bay of Pigs cost us more than 150 lives and hundreds of seriously wounded. We would like to hear some self-criticism from the powerful country and a guarantee that this shall never happen again in our hemisphere.

Yesterday, April 13th, commemorated the seventh anniversary of the failed coup against the Revolution in Venezuela.

For the sake of democracy and human rights, we need to be hearing a voice from Washington telling us that the School of the Americas, specializing in coups d’état and torture, will be shut down forever.

We cannot forget that, in April, El Salvador will still be governed by the ARENA leader, who was an oligarchic ally of Bush in the Iraqi genocide. In a million human lives sacrificed there is enough blood to drown all the accomplices.

Am I being offensive by remembering this? Or, is it also prohibited, in the name of decency, naiveté and complicity, to refer to the subject?

The decision to relax travel restrictions is indeed positive in itself, although minimal. Many others are required, including the abolition of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act which is exclusively applied to our country alone in the whole world. We should like to hear an answer to the question about whether the migratory privileges being used to combat the Cuban Revolution and to strip it of human resources would also be granted to all other Latin American and Caribbean nations. But everything in Port of Spain will be secret. Listening to the debates and the statements to be made by the heads of state and government will be forbidden. Whatever is said by each of them there will anyway be known.

We have no wish to offend Obama in the least, but he shall be president for one or two terms. He is not responsible for what has happened and I am sure that he wouldn’t commit Bush’s atrocities. In his wake, however, someone equal or worse than his predecessor might come. Men come and go; peoples live on.

There are other extremely serious problems such as the climate change, and the current president of the United States has decided to cooperate in that problem so vital for humankind. We have to acknowledge that.